What is the difference between a hurricane a tornado & a twister?

Answer 1

A hurricane or tropical cyclone is called different things in different parts of the world but they are the same. For example, in the Indian Ocean they are referred to as cyclones, in Australia cyclones or willy-willies, in the western north Pacific as typhoons and in the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans as hurricanes.

Hurricanes or tropical cyclones are the ultimate in a heat engines. It takes water vapor and transforms a small portion of the latent heat in water vapor into energy. The vast amount of water vapor needed to support a hurricane dictates that it can only form and maintain itself while over open...warm waters of an ocean or sea. The hurricane in a sort of simplistic sense can be thought of as a well organized cluster of thunderstorms that are mutually supporting and contribute additional heat and energy to the tropical storm. Tropical cyclones form in areas adjacent to the equator (theoretically not on the equator) and turn counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. A hurricane, which has many thunderstorms, which can and do produce tornadoes as they come ashore which adds to the destructive force of the hurricane. On the other hand, a tornado can never become a hurricane.

The tornado is the product of a single updraft within a thunderstorm. Tornadoes most frequently also turn counter clockwise in the northern hemisphere but can turn in either direction depending on the direction that the updraft is turning.

A twister is just another name for tornado. They are the same.

While the largest tornados are normally less than a mile wide and have a life time measured in minutes...the hurricane can often have destructive force winds that extend 30 to as much as 100 miles (sometimes more) from the center of the hurricane and last for hours to days.

Answer 2

Hurricane and typhoon are just different names for the same thing: a strong tropical cyclone. Cyclonic storms are those that have rapidly rotating winds around a center, usually originating over warm water. Twister is a nickname for tornado, which is a very small cyclonic storm that originates out of a local thunderstorm. The big difference between tropical cyclones and tornadoes: energy. A strong tropical cyclone operates on the equivalent energy of a 10 Megaton nuclear bomb going off every 20 minutes! And these cyclones can exists for hundreds of hours! A tornado, which usually exists for only a few minutes at most, doesn't even contain as much as .00000001% of the energy as hurricanes like Katrina or Ike.

Answer 3

Tornado and twister are the same but the hurricane is different type of weather system.
Tornado and twister form over land( a tornado formed over ocean is called water spout),affect comparatively a small area,last for a few hours,sometimes becomes violent than a hurricane and can be seen only in a radar screen only.However a funnel type of cloud descending to the ground can be seen with naked eye.
Hurricane forms over sea ,affects a very large area,lasts for days together,sometimes causes tidal waves while crossing the shore,brings heavy rain and can be seen in the satellite pictures with an eye.

Answer 4

A hurricane is a huge rotating storm system, usually gathering energy over the Atlantic Ocean (in the Pacific it would be a Typhoon for some reason). Think of the air as having the quality of a liquid, and having waves like an ocean. Where there are dips, that is low pressure and it sucks energy into itself, feeding it.

A tornado (twister) is a localised phenomenon where energy is sucked up from the heated landmass.

Both of these can occur anywhere, not just in the Americas, but America is conducive to producing larger tornadoes than the UK, since the land mass is much larger and can store more heat energy to transfer. Though oddly the UK does get more tornadoes per square mile, hardly anyone notices them as they go safely out to sea and fade away.

Answer 5

Tornadoes and hurricanes are both forms of wind.

A hurricane is a combination of a storm and a wind, which moves very quickly. Heat generates the storm, which makes the wind travel faster. Tropical storms rely on plenty of warm, moist air from the sea, so tend to die out over land. The centre of the tropical storm is called the eye and is usually 30-50km across. It is an area of calm, with light winds and no rain. Wind speeds average 160km per hour around the eye.

Tornadoes are usually funnels of spiraling air that descend from the base of clouds to the earth. A tornado is usually narrow, about 1/2 km wide and rarely moves more than 20 km. They can form over land and sea. If they form over the sea, they are called waterspouts and if they form over the land, they are called twisters.

Answer 6

A tornado and a twister are two names for the same thing.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/edu/safety/tornadoguide.html

A hurricane is a giant storm that forms on the ocean.

http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/

Answer 7

A hurricane goes sideways
A tornado is a jet
Twister is a game for contortionists